The Lives of a Phoenix
by Reincarnated Poet
Summary: What we see is only what we are allowed to see, a snippet of the larger reality. A phoenix lives forever and it sees so much more than we can imagine.


**The Lives of a Phoenix**

**Warning: Character death. **

_"Usually it's someone from the other side," she lied, leaning back against him._

_"Liar," he murmured into her hair. God, if he didn't know her, no one ever would. "Tell me."_

_"You," she admitted, squeezing his wrist. He'd take it poorly. He always took it poorly. "Usually, it's you." He froze behind her, withdrawing the cage of his arms to turn her around._

_"I wouldn't...I don't..."_

_"You think it was me, sometimes," she told him, gaze down, refusing to meet the dark eyes that looked for any reason to be absolved of a sin he couldn't imagine committing._

_"I would ne-"_

_"You would. For James and for Lily and sometimes for Remus, you would." She smiled at him. "Once for Peter even. And that's alright. It's why I love you. It's why I always love you, even if you don't love me."_

_"I won't," he promised, drawing her back into the cage of his arms. She went willingly, easing against him like he was a memory that might shatter. For a long moment she wondered at what he was promising. If he wouldn't kill her this time or if he'd never not love her. Both were equally possible with as well as she knew him by now. "How many times?"_

_"Does it matter?"_

_"Yes," he said, and his voice was adamant, that tone that she'd grown so accustomed to over the years, that tone that said he would not drop this._

_"I want to know," he said after a long while. She stiffened against him, sighing out the anxiety that bloomed in her chest. She could deny him nothing. Not really, not when he truly asked for it like he so rarely asked. "I need to know all of it."_

_"No, you don't," she said. She could feel his lips quirk against her forehead._

_"I want to know," he amended._

_"No, you don't," she repeated, praying he'd just let it go. As if he'd ever let anything go. As if it was in him to just give up._

_"Tell me anyway," he said, and she smiled. The words were whispered, half spoken and half a breath. She felt the pounding of his heart against her cheek, the tremor in his hands as he ran them up and down her spine. She closed her eyes against the reality that words would bring._

**-The Lives of a Phoenix-**

"Lara!"

"Coming!" she shouted, taking the steps two at a time. She skittered sideways and nearly fell down the last two but managed to keep her footing. A young blond boy ran in front of her, laughing uncontrollable as he ran, his wand tucked firmly into his hand, casting different spells and jinxes at the suits of armor that lined the hall.

"Lara, hurry up or they'll pick up on you!" He shouted, disappearing down another hall. Lara sighed and chased after the boy she'd called brother since they'd come to Hogwarts together so many years ago. Hogwarts had a way of making family of people that had none.

"Meryn, slow down!" she called to him, but he was too far gone in his race through the halls. "Daft git," she said, a hint of affection coloring her words. He raced down another flight of stairs and a long hallway, Lara at his heels the entire way. Finally, he raced up the stairs to Gryffindor tower, his longer legs taking the stairs two at a time.

Lara tucked her wand beneath her elbow as she ran up the stairs after him, cheeks flushed and adrenaline surging in her veins. She crested the top in time to see a dark head of hair and startled grey eyes before she collided with another student and over balanced. There was an odd suspended moment, almost as though her body was deciding if it should fall or fly before something hard collided with the back of her head.

**-The Lives of a Phoenix-**

_"I didn't really know what had happened that first time. I was falling one minute, and the next I woke up in Dumbledore's office, staring up at him as he explained that a phoenix is born with a human counterpart, that their deaths are triggered by ours."_

_"Who was at the top of the stairs?" he asked, pulled her tighter against his chest._

_"I didn't know him well," she answered, giving his wrist a little squeeze. He sighed into her hair. "If it makes you feel better, you weren't you yet, not in that reality."_

_"That helps so much, love. You didn't mean to kill me, and it wasn't really you," he said. She could almost see the sarcastic turn on his lips, the way his eyebrows would pitch upward at the center._

_"Are you going to interrupt every time?" she asked pinching at the skin of his wrist._

_"Probably."_

_"At least you're honest," she said on a sigh. "But if you keep interrupting, this is going to take entirely too long."_

_"I'm not in a hurry, love."_

_"You should be. You know the sooner-"_

_"I'm not in a hurry, love," he repeated. The arms around her tightened._

**-The Lives of a Phoenix-**

Lara jumped up the final step to Gryffindor tower, a smile on her mouth as she sidestepped around the grey eyed Sirius Black at the top. Meryn had just dodged through the portrait hole, and Lara followed him neatly. As her feet touched the plush red carpet of the Gryffindor common room she turned, staring back out the portrait hole a moment at the annoyed faces of James Potter and Sirius Black.

"Ladies," she said, sweeping into a low bow as the portrait swung back shut. She didn't see the look of indignation on Sirius's face or the lop sided amused grin on James Potter's. All she cared about, in that moment, was the exhilaration flooding through her veins. She'd done it. In another life...well, in another life she'd laid at the bottom of a set of stairs and shattered her skull against the marble floor.

A smile of victory on her lips, she turned and ran after Meryn who was shouting at her across the room.

She lived through Hogwarts that time, which was something that didn't always happen.

The next time was just after graduation. She'd gone the route of a medi-witch, something her parents approved of over an auroror, and had been in the field, helping triage after a particularly nasty skirmish. She didn't know who did it, but shortly after, she found herself waking up back at home, in her bed. Her bed in her parent's home, the one with the patchwork stars.

"Son of a bitch," she said aloud, staring at the familiar desk.

"Lara Marie!" Her mother's voice shouted, startled, as she opened the door. "What did I just hear you say?"

The woman had stood there in all the glory that she recalled her in from her childhood. A curling mess of brown hair, bright blue eyes and that slightly upturned nose. Lips almost too red and a cleft in her chin that was nearly masculine. The most beautiful woman that Lara could ever remember seeing. The second time Lara watched Marie Paraet die, it was ten years later than it had been the first time. Lara did not consider the consequences, even when her father, who had far outlived her mother before, died the same day.

She didn't have long to wonder though, because she was swept up in a war that was not theirs to win. That third time, it was a death eater, and it was Sirius Black and James Potter that stared, wide eyed, as she fell to the ground, dead before her body touched dirt.

**-The Lives of a Phoenix-**

_"I don't like it when I'm there when you die," he muttered, and there was a strain to his voice that she had hoped to never heard there again._

_"Why?"_

_"Because it means that I could have done something and I didn't," he admitted into her hair._

_"You're always there," she told him. "I don't know why, but you're always there. Even the last time. Even when I was selfish."_

_"It's not selfish to want to live, love," he murmured, running those fingers up and down her spine, as if he could play her like so many piano keys. "I like that you stayed, if only just once. I want to hear how it ends."_

_"That's not how it ends," she said with a firm shake of her head. "That can't be how it ends."_

_"I don't know. It doesn't sound so terrible," he gave her a half hearted shrug._

_"Tell me that after you watch James die. Tell me that after Remus is alone and dead on a battlefield. Tell me that when you're the last one standing of the marauders that you love. Tell me that when your godson dies for you." He was silent then, and she was sure if she pushed away far enough to look at his face she'd see his eyes, wide and staring._

_"I don't-"_

_"I'm sorry," she said, cutting him off. "It was selfish to let things go. I should have ended everything after James. It always goes bad after James."_

_"Tell me about the first time?" he asked._

_"The first time that James and Lily..."_

_"I need to know," he echoed himself._

_"Maybe that you do," she agreed._

**-The Lives of a Phoenix-**

The first time Lily and James Potter died, she didn't know either of them. It made her nervous to be around either James Potter or Sirius Black, as often times, when she closed her eyes only to open them somewhere else, it was the pair of them that she saw. She'd been out on the street, just walking like she might any other day when she'd heard the pain-laced, manic voice of Sirius Black as he screamed at his close friend.

She had opened her mouth to shout out at the pair of them as they caused a scene in the middle of a busy muggle street. She saw Peter's wand behind his back as the explosion blew the ground from beneath her feet. She bled out onto the pavement that time, as aurorors took a laughing Sirius Black away at wand-point.

**-The Lives of a Phoenix-**

_"Not so different than this time, then," he said softly against her shoulder. _

_"Not so very different, no," she agreed. "It was just James this time though."_

_"I couldn't ever consider a world where James Potter and Lily Evans fell in love." His tone was amused, nearly jovial. _

_"In a world where I don't push Marlene McKinnon on James and drive Lily to guilt over Severus, it happens. Every time," she said with a shrug of her shoulders. "I've never seen two people find each other so consistently." _

_"Not even..." he bit her shoulder lightly, as if he wanted her to finish the idea for him. _

_"Not even you and I," she said. His arms tightened around her middle as if he could hold her there by sheer force of will. As if it would stop what had to happen. _

_"Make it happen next time?" he asked. _

_"We last longer together," she agreed, squeezing at his wrists around her front. "But we last longer when I'm the one in Azkaban at the end." His grip slackened in shock. He never liked hearing about..._

**-The Lives of a Phoenix-**

"Lara Paraet, you stand accused of three charges of murder with the Avada Kedavra, fifteen charges of compulsion with the Imperius and reckless endangerment of a child. How do you plead?"

"Guilty," she said, staring unflinchingly up at the Wizengmot. "I decline trial."

"You do realize that this admission means that you will be levied with the highest sentence for the crime?"

"I understand," she said, that blank stare still anchored firmly on them.

"Guilty!" he said, slamming that gavel down. They walked her down the narrow row from the defendant's chair to the rear of the court room. She passed the flaming red hair of Lily Evans and the sorrowful frown of James Potter. Their son sat between them, confused eyes staring at her as she walked past.

"Lara?" Lily's voice followed her as she walked past, eyes down and unflinching. She would not look up. If she did, she'd see everything there, in their eyes. She'd see James's haunted eyes as Bella's voice shouted out to the world. _I killed Sirius Black! I killed Sirius Black! _She'd see those eyes swing to her as she stood, frozen by the door, where she'd been waiting for the other woman to retreat.

Lara had frozen there, staring at the veil that mocked everything she'd ever known. She'd stayed there until she was bound and walked from the Department of Mysteries at wand-point.

**-The Lives of a Phoenix-**

_"You wouldn't have killed for Voldemort," he said from behind her, but his arms had fallen away to either side of her. She stood uneasily and took a few hesitant steps away from him, away from the warmth and the love of him. The thing that she would do anything to see survive. _

_"I did," she said, knowing the effect that it would have. The way that it would ignite in his stomach. She wrapped her arms around her chest, trying to mimic the way he comforted her just moments before. She heard him stand behind her, heard the quickness to his breathing. It was time then. _

_"No-"_

_"Remus," she said firmly, turning back toward him and dropping both of her hands to her sides. "I killed Remus right in front of you. With a white mask and a black hood and him bound at my feet. Voldemort gave me the command to end his life." _And as a boon to me, for my loyalty, he would spare yours. _"You told me that you'd find out who I was beneath that mask, that you would hunt me until my last breath and that you would-_

_"Avada Kedavra!"_

_Her body fell to the floor, cold before it hit. The killing curse sang through her veins. She would wake in another time, in another place, with another chance to make everything right._


End file.
